It was about 5:45 p.m., and Komal Shah had been at the opening for San Francisco’s Fog Design and Art for about a half an hour—but the collector, known for her near-exclusive focus on women artists, had only made it to three of the fair’s 58 booths.
After a few minutes shadowing her, it was clear why: “San Francisco loves to socialize,” Shah told me.
She knows pretty much everyone who is anyone in the Bay Area art scene, and was graciously chatting with each and every one of them. There was Fog founder Stanlee Gatti, Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco director Ali Gass, and, from Stanford University, vice president of arts Deborah Cullinan and Cantor Arts Center director Veronica Roberts.
And then there were the out-of-towners, such as Dia Art Foundation director Jessica Morgan, Christie’s day sales specialist Kathryn Widing, and artist Tomashi Jackson, part of Shah’s collection and showing at the fair with Los Angeles’s Night Gallery.
Shah also introduced me to many of her fellow board members at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, for which the fair’s gala serves as a fundraiser, as well as director Christopher Bedford, known for his progressive and inclusive approach to expanding the historical art canon beyond white men.
“He has really come in and changed the museum in a positive way,” Shah said.
Many of these friends and colleagues were promising to see Shah the following day, at the brunch at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the current venue for “Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection,” the first public showing of Shah’s collection with husband Gaurav Garg.
When I first linked up with Shah, she was asking SFMOMA chief curator Janet Bishop about the fair’s must-see works. Bishop flagged two late Bay Area artists—both women, naturally—with recent or forthcoming shows she had curated at the museum.
David Zwirner had a trio of sculptures by Ruth Asawa (1926–2013), who will get her first posthumous retrospective in April, courtesy of SFMOMA and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Bishop was particularly taken with a small 1965 wall-mounted sculpture that was electroplated. (A small example of Asawa’s classic hanging wire-looped sculptures had been snapped up for $900,000.)
“It’s the result of her wild experimentation—soaking things in acid baths and shooting them through with electric currents,” Bishop said. “It’s very special and very dense and beautiful.”
Shah has been looking to add an Asawa to her collection, but for $425,000, she deemed it too expensive. (The gallery did have some less pricey prints starting at just $10,000 on the booth’s large back wall, senior partner Kristine Bell pointed out, as well Joan Mitchell’s last-ever print, which had already sold for $150,000.)
Bishop’s other pick was a large-scale 1976 canvas by figurative painter Joan Brown (1938–1990) titled Let’s Dance. The work, which appeared in SFMOMA’s fabulous show of the artist in 2022 and ’23, was on offer from Claudia Altman-Siegel at her namesake San Francisco gallery Altman Siegel for $350,000 courtesy of a “very prestigious local collection,” according to the dealer.
Inspired by a torrid affair Brown had with the owner of an Italian restaurant, it shows a couple at dinner, one red wine glass spilled over the table as the waiter pours another.
Shah wasn’t just relying on recommendations from trusted friends and colleagues. At one point, she pulled from her pocket a handwritten list, neatly folded in half, of the different dealers she wanted to visit, and their booth numbers. But what Shah was really looking for was the unexpected.
“What I love about going to a fair is for it to be organic. So much is about falling in love,” she said. And when that moment happened, it was immediately apparent.
After showing off the show-stopping Brown, Altman-Siegel took Shah to the booth’s side wall, where she had a trio of abstract paintings by Hiba Kalache (b. 1972). The Lebanese artist moved to San Francisco after the explosion in Beirut in 2020, and her works are inspired by Middle Eastern fables.
Shah leaned in close to examine one of the works, then then turned to face Altman-Siegel, her face breaking out into a massive smile: “There is something about it that draws in me,” she said, promptly putting in a reserve on the $12,000 painting. “This is the best.”
Another moment came when the event photographer flagged Shah for a photo op as we were passing New York’s Fergus McCaffrey. Her colorful coat and dress perfectly complemented the booth’s large, hard edge blue and yellow painting by Marcia Hahfif (1929–2018), painted in the 1960s when the American artist was in Italy.
Shah already had a small work from the period, but was especially struck by the large, $375,000 examples at the fair: “I have chills,” she declared. “It’s very sensual.”
With other works, Shah played her cards closer to the chest. New York dealer Andrew Kreps was very excited to show her a braided ceramic Simone Leigh (b. 1967) from the artist’s first show at Luhring Augustine in New York in 2018.
“I think it’s a really important, significant work of hers,” Kreps said. “And it’s $150,000, which is very reasonable.”
“Give me some time to think about it,” Shah said noncommittally.
She also seemed intrigued by a bronze Erika Verzutti (b. 1971) sculpture the dealer was offering, inspired by ancient fertility figures like the Venus of Willendorf, but inverted to stand on her head. Shah squatted to examine the $75,000 piece, adorned with a purple braided belt made by Verzutti’s mother. Kreps plans to stage a solo show for the Brazilian sculptor, who he said “has really become the artist of her generation,” in April.
Shah didn’t finalize any purchases on opening night, but there were a number of intriguing works, including the Kalache, she was excited to revisit on day two. Sleeping on it would give her the chance to learn more about a new artist, or to decide between different examples of their work. There were pieces by the Australian aboriginal painter Sally Gabori (1924–2015), for instance, she was considering from two New York galleries, Venus Over Manhattan and Karma.
And buying from Fog wasn’t just about Shah continuing to add to her collection—it was about helping ensure the success of the fair.
“When dealers come to our hometown, we want to support them for sure,” she said.
From Mexico City’s Kurimanzutto, Shah had lots of questions for cofounder José Kuri about the work of WangShui (b. 1986), a large-scale painting on a sheet of aluminum for $80,000. The artist is continuing their experimentations with generative A.I.—featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial in New York—creating works inspired by images produced by an algorithm trained on the artist’s previous paintings. Now, for the first time, they are using ink and oil in addition to abrading the aluminum surface with mark making.
“They are scratching and etching into the metal surface and it absorbs and reflects light,” Kuri said. “They say it’s like painting with light.”
Shah, who was new to the artist’s work, was intrigued. But she was also clearly excited to see more from some of the artists already in her collection.
There was Firelei Baez (b. 1981) at Hauser and Wirth—the collector loaned two works to the artist’s traveling solo show, currently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and also included a two-panel piece at BAMPFA.
The gallery’s Beatrice Shen told us all about the $395,000 work on offer, a large, more abstract-looking canvas incorporating a reproduction of a historical document about tropical diseases meant to represent a powerful ocean wave washing away stereotypical views of the Caribbean region.
And Shah made sure to point out a piece by 92-year-old Colombian textile artist Olga de Amaral at Lisson Gallery, who she had fallen in love with last year during Art Basel Paris. The artist’s solo show at Fondation Cartier was the best thing Shah had seen during the fair, and now one of her works was in the BAMPFA show.
At New York’s Mendes Wood DM, there was a $300,000 piece by Sonia Gomes (b. 1948), an Afro-Brazilian artist also on view at BAMPFA and slated for a solo show this spring at Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, New York. Gomes is known for her textile art, incorporating both indigenous Brazilian techniques and more high-brow Portuguese embroidery in works that exist at the border of painting, sculpture, and installation.
“She really created this radical movement of taking something that could be considered craft and turning it into high art,” gallery cofounder Pedro Mendes said, noting that Gomes does almost all her work herself, making it hard to meet demand from museums and collectors. “She has only four people in the studio. She will not let anything not go through her hands. It’s incredible—and it’s a problem.”
“I’m dying to meet her,” Shah said.
She clearly values her relationships with the artists she collects. Jackson ended up coming to the BAMPFA brunch, as did Alex Hedison (b. 1969), who had a hand-embellished photograph at the fair for $12,000 with Southern Guild, of Cape Town and Los Angeles.
Hedison told me she began making these chemograms around 2020. Experimenting with chemicals, she would watch as the blank paper transformed when exposed: “These really bright extraordinarily colors would emerge from black and white. These moments were shifting before my eyes.”
“She doesn’t have complete control,” gallery founded Trevyn McGowan added. “At the point where there’s magic, she photographs it.”
It’s that search for magic that motivates Shah as she continues to build her collection—searching for it, and sharing it with others. “It’s a mission now,” she said, “to show and prove that women are certainly equal to men—and also better.”
Fog Design and Art is on view at the Fort Mason Center for Arts and Culture, 2 Marina Boulevard, San Francisco, California, January 22–26, 2025.
“Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection” is on view at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2155 Center Street, Berkeley, California, October 27, 2024–April 20, 2025.